An archive of articles and listserve postings of interest, mostly posted without commentary, linked to commentary at the Education Notes Online blog. Note that I do not endorse the points of views of all articles, but post them for reference purposes.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

The ISO Versus Socialist Alternative

Sectarian Delusions on the American Left

by LOUIS PROYECT

Another International Socialist Organization Internal Bulletin has been leaked to the public over on the External Bulletin website,
home to a group of former members. It contains an article written by
long-time leader Todd Chretien that targets Socialist Alternative
(SAlt)—the group that is rightfully proud of their comrade Kshama Sawant
being elected to the Seattle City Council and for her role in the
passing of a $15 minimum wage.
I have been partial to Chretien in the past because of his close ties
to the late Peter Camejo, whose gubernatorial campaign in California he
helped organize in 2003. I worked closely with Camejo in the early 80s
and confess to having stolen all my best ideas from him.
The ISO’s chief criticism of Socialist Alternative’s electoral
strategy is that it is “triumphalist”, a musty term from the Marxist
lexicon. Specifically, Chretien regards SAlt’s call for a hundred
independent candidates to run in the 2014-midterm elections as an
“overblown perspective”. In his view, her victory did not necessarily
mean that political conditions had ripened to the point where such a
large number of candidates would be forthcoming. Such “triumphalism”
might even be catching–to the point where ISO’ers would be seduced into
believing that it was feasible to form a new “broad” party in the near
term, or that regroupment of the far left was the order of the
day. Heaven forefend.
The ISO is not the only group on the left that is wary about efforts on behalf of “broad” parties. WSWS.org,
the newspaper of a tiny sect that is hostile not only to SAlt but also
to the ISO (and just about everyone else on the left as well), told its
readers:

Socialist Alternative has called for a new coalition of
like-minded groups, in alliance with the trade unions, to run 100
“independent” candidates in local elections next year. Their aim is to
establish a political framework analogous to Syriza in Greece, the Left
Party in Germany, and the New Anti-capitalist Party in France.

In tracking down SAlt’s call, it turns out to be more what we might
call food for thought rather than a promissory note. From the Kshama Sawant website:

As a concrete step to get there, we should form
coalitions throughout the country with the potential to come together on
a national level to run 100 independent working-class candidates in the
2014 mid-term elections. The unions who supported the Moore and Sawant
campaigns and many others should run full slates of independent
working-class candidates in the mid-term, state, and local elections.

Chretien points out that the 100 independent candidates have not
materialized, a sure sign of SAlt’s pie-in-the-sky tendencies. But was
such a call anything more than what we used to call “propaganda” in the
American SWP? (For some odd reason the ISO has studied the SWP for
useful hints about party-building. In my view, this is like studying the
Hindenburg or the Titanic for transportation ideas.)
Before it became a dirty word, propaganda meant raising an idea that
could inspire people to take political action. For example, Lenin used
to propagandize for a constituent assembly in Czarist Russia whether or
not it was immediately on the agenda. I for one think that the call for a
hundred independent candidates was not only right but also one that
could be raised again in the next election cycle, to use the hackneyed
term from CNN and MSNBC.
With respect to the Syriza question, it is not exactly clear that
SAlt is so gung-ho on a broad party. In the most recent Greek elections
their comrades ran their own campaign as a way of differentiating
themselves from a party that they have characterized as “inadequate” and
adhering to “watered down” demands. So, WSWS.org can breathe a sigh of
relief.
Unlike the people behind WSWS, the ISO is at least verbally committed
to the idea of a Syriza type formation in the USA. Just over a year ago
their leader Ahmed Shawki gave a talk to an ISO conference that pointed
in such a direction even if it ultimately led nowhere. One must
conclude that both the ISO and SAlt are both capable of making
unfulfilled projections. I urge that they be forgiven for such
peccadillos.
Probably worried a bit about the smaller organization breathing down
the ISO’s neck, Chretien calls attention to a SAlt article filled with
the characteristic bravado of small propaganda groups convinced of their
special role in the final showdown with capitalism. The article speaks
of having picked up new members in 45 cities and projects the group
doubling in size this year, mostly on account of Kshama Sawant’s high
profile.
Like Hertz deriding Avis, Chretien dismisses all this as “irrational
exuberance”, Yale economist Robert Schiller’s term for stock market and
real estate bubbles. One can understand why he would be so skeptical. It
was not so long ago that the ISO itself had the illusion of nonstop
growth until it ran into the glass ceiling all such groups impose upon
themselves with their ideological purity and their bogus notions of
“democratic centralism”. If SAlt’s goal was to become a party of 1,000
members, history will record that it is certainly within reach. But in a
country of nearly 300 million people, that is like spitting into the
ocean. The sad reality is that it is only a broad left party that can
begin to reach those millions, something that neither the ISO nor SAlt
is ready to acknowledge except as an abstraction. In reality it would
require dissolving themselves into a much larger movement and thus
losing their precious individuality.
Let me turn now to the rather arcane matter of how the ISO
distinguishes itself from SAlt in terms of their revolutionary bona
fides, a topic that I am sure would make most CounterPunch readers’ eyes
glaze over. I will do my best to make my account as lively as possible.
SAlt’s “irrational exuberance” was something they supposedly caught
like a bad cold from their leadership in Britain, where the Committee
for a Workers International is based. This latest attempt to build a
Fourth International has the same tendency as every one in the past,
going back to the days when Leon Trotsky was running the show. It
revolves around the idea that a prerevolutionary situation exists and
that it will be squandered unless Leninist parties are built in the nick
of time. Chretien scoffs at the CWI’s claim that their South African
section was in the vanguard of the working class given their tiny vote
(0.05). We are led to believe that Socialist Alternative has the same
delusions of grandeur.
Of course, such projections are essential for groups in the
“Leninist” mold. How else would you persuade young people to give up so
much of their time, energy and money unless they felt that socialism was
on the near-term agenda? What tends to happen with such groups is
burn-out as people reach their 30s or 40s and the cold, hard reality
sinks in that capitalism stands before them like an immovable object
when their small numbers are quite resistible. The only force capable of
making a dent in that immovable object will have to accept people on
their own terms. The largely Black and Latino NYC subway work force that
is quite capable of bringing Wall Street to its knees by not reporting
to work and that supported the Occupy movement is not likely to attend 3
meetings a week or fit in with a milieu largely made up of white kids
who attended Columbia University and other top-drawer institutions.
Chretien also takes issue with CWI leader Peter Taaffe’s claim that a
“rapid and peaceful socialist transformation” of society is possible,
an obviously revisionist notion. No such illusions exist in the
ideologically granite-hard ISO that would never make such errors.
Instead of succumbing to parliamentary cretinism as they used to put it a
century ago, the ISO has an “extra-parliamentary” orientation. What
Chretien fails to mention is that Taaffe was not speaking about Fabian
socialist gradualism but rather about one of the most
“extra-parliamentary” struggles of the past 50 years, namely the
May-June 1968 events in France when workers and students built
barricades and seemed poised to take power. Taaffe wrote:

There is not only the sombre tragedy of Chile, but the
brilliant example of France, when in May 1968 over 10 million workers
participated in a magnificent general strike. The economy was paralysed
and the state suspended in mid-air. When General de Gaulle fled in panic
to the headquarters of the French forces in Germany, his
commander-in-chief, General Massu, told him bluntly that it would be
impossible for the army to intervene against the working class under
those conditions. A rapid and peaceful socialist transformation of French society would have been entirely possible.

In other words, Taaffe was not talking up Norman Thomas but V.I.
Lenin. A “rapid and peaceful socialist transformation” was possible in
the same way that it was possible in October 1917. Bloodshed only came
when Soviet Russia was invaded, after the relatively peaceful initial
conquest of power. One hopes that Chretien can avoid quoting his
adversaries out of context in the future. Such behavior does not reflect
well on him.
Chretien complains about SAlt reneging on promises to work with the
ISO on election campaigns: “It remains to be seen if SAlt can overcome
its sectarian tendencies and learn how to genuinely collaborate
with other forces on the left.” Who can say why (or even if) this
haughty attitude was manifested? Similar complaints were raised about
the ISO when their rivals approached them about endorsing Sawant’s first
campaign for city council. My experience with these sorts of “he said,
she said” disagreements is that both parties share blame. Since they are
fighting for market share, there is an almost inevitable tendency to
blame each other when an agreement can’t be reached like in a failed
corporate merger.
Finally, Cretien draws a contrast between the ISO and the group that it can see gaining rapidly in its rear view mirror:

Our stated goal is no different from Socialist
Alternative’s. We are “dedicated to the project of creating a
revolutionary workers’ party as a part of a worldwide movement for
socialism.” However we are going about this task in way that is
different from SAlt’s approach. Our vision is not that the ISO will just
become the revolutionary workers party when it reaches a certain size
and we drop the “O” and add a “P.” The creation of real mass party of
revolutionary workers will undoubtedly involve forces larger than us.
Our work is in the creation and development of Marxist militants who are
able be involved with those larger forces, movements and unions in
order to weave the threads that will in the future pull sections of
these forces into that thing that will be a party.

One of the things I have learned about the Leninist left over the
years is that except for the nethermost reaches like WSWS.org or the
Spartacist League, it is de rigueur to make disclaimers like it
“will undoubtedly involve forces larger than us.” The problem is that we
are not interested in what happens down the road. We are focused on
2014 when small left groups have a heavy responsibility for taking the next step
to draw in larger forces. The ISO, like the Socialist Alternative, is
an energetic, uncompromising, principled group that we can appreciate
for its efforts. However, we are in a period of deepening class
confrontation where everybody on the left will be sorely tested as to
their ability to transcend artificial divisions that weaken us in the
face of the enemy. The time to overcome such divisions is now, not in
the distant future. In fact actions that we take today, or fail to take,
will have an impact on the relationship of forces down the road. Unless
we begin to move away from sectarianism today, our chances of success
in the future will be compromised if not entirely thwarted. One hopes
that both the ISO and Socialist Alternative can rise to the occasion.Louis Proyect blogs at http://louisproyect.org and is the moderator of the Marxism mailing list. In his spare time, he reviews films for CounterPunch.

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About Me

Norm Scott worked in the NYC school system from 1967 to 2002, spending 30 of those years teaching elementary school in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn (District 14). He retired in July 2002. He has been active in education reform and in the UFT, often as a critic of union policy, since 1970, working with a variety of groups. In 1996 he began publishing Education Notes, a newsletter for teachers attending the UFT Delegate Assembly. In 2002, he expanded the paper into a 16-page tabloid, printing up to 25,000 copies distributed to teacher mailboxes through Ed Notes supporters. Education Notes started publishing a blog in Aug. 2006. Norm also writes the School Scope education column for The Wave, the Rockaway Beach community newspaper.